


run as far as your dark brown eyes can see

by chickenfree



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, Hurt/Bafflement, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Like Those Inflatable Soccer Suits, Love Is When You Boink Into Each Other's Weird Coping Mechanisms And Then Fall Over, M/M, References to Past Bullying & Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 01:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenfree/pseuds/chickenfree
Summary: Dan’s laughing, pleased with his own joke about being an awkward child, about misfit war wounds, which Phil will obviously relate to.Oh.(Or: the many times Phil has been surprised, and the one thing that didn't surprise him at all.)





	1. i don't think i can ever learn

**Author's Note:**

> I got scared by a bat in an outhouse in the woods & this is the 3am bat-phobia-powered fever dream that came out of it. Sorry.

“Who was your first kiss?”

They’re lying in bed. In Phil’s bed, really, but now Dan is in it as much as he is, it feels like. The pause screen music is still playing. Dan had started leaning into him, at some point, tucked a hand under his shirt. They’re mostly just talking. Dan’s hand idly drifts over his ribs.

“Ben.”

“Was it awkward?” 

Phil’s thinking of his own first kiss, fumbling around with a girl that he barely knew, a funny story for later. For right now, if Dan asks back.

Dan’s hand stills. He’s quiet for a while.

“He said he would tell everyone that I’d kissed him, if I didn’t. So I did. And then he told everyone anyways. That I’d kissed him, and I knew he had a girlfriend.”

Phil winces. Dan shifts against him, sitting up.

He reaches down to poke Phil in the side with his knuckle.

“Bet I could kick your ass at this again. Even with my fingers taped together.”

\--

From the moment they meet, Dan’s pushing and pulling and reaching into his space. Sometimes he reaches back, too fast, and Dan flinches like he’s already been hit.

\--

He tells Phil this long, involved story about being rivals with this other boy in theatre, even though the other boy always got the part he was after, so really it was just Dan being jealous & extravagant about it. Eventually there was a part that the other boy was apathetic about, a part that Dan had loved and thought would love him back.

The punchline is that Dan misses the audition, because he had a black eye. And his ribs hurt too much to sing. Mainly the black eye, though, which Dan says was visible from outer space.

Phil doesn’t know how he’s meant to react. Dan’s laughing, pleased with his own joke about being an awkward child, about misfit war wounds, which Phil will obviously relate to.

Oh.

He grins back, tilting his head.

“They couldn’t have covered it with makeup? Don’t they do that?”

Dan’s beaming.

“Phil, no. No, I’m telling you, it was huge. Someone tried, but it was like a balloon, I’m serious.”

\--

Phil says something about Martyn doing something ridiculous at his birthday party. He would get talked into making an appearance, even when they were annoying the shit out of each other. Phil would end up following all of his harebrained ideas like a lost dog joining the circus, giddy to be involved in the plans. His friends would follow, too, but Martyn was the main event. They ended up in huge amounts of trouble, more often than not.

Dan’s laughing. Phil thinks it’s because he’s that older brother.

“You’re lucky to have an older brother. One of my birthdays was just me and Adrian, and he told me about the plot of The Teletubbies the whole fucking time. Phil - they have a sentient hoover. It’s like a horror movie.”

\--

“I’m not finishing school.” 

Phil starts. He’s been wandering around twitter for a while, half-heartedly answering work emails. Dan’s been engrossed in whatever he’s doing. Revising, allegedly. Once in a while they stop to show each other something, but mainly they’ve just been sitting together. _ Tangent arcs_, Phil thinks, distantly.

“No?”

“No.”

“Alright.”

“Really?”

Dan’s looking at him, all grumpy. There’s bags under his eyes. 

Phil shrugs. He had plenty of his own tantrums about school. He’d use up all his good sense on an exam and lose his sense of direction entirely. He threatened to get into the fountain, in winter, more than once. He once had to be stopped from dropkicking a textbook off a roof. It wasn’t that long ago. It’s only November, anyways. November, and the first year; Dan will be over it by breakfast tomorrow.

Dan hums, considering. He goes back to scrolling, for a minute.

“Hey - can I sleep here?" 

“Were you going to take the bus, at 3am?”

He shrugs. He smiles up at Phil like Phil's paid him a compliment.

“If you wanted me to.”

\--

Dan shows up with his suitcase, and his backpack. 

Phil is having a day. He’s meant to be going to see his grandparents, but his alarm never went off, and he burned his toast, and he’s somehow just now realized that he never put the laundry in yesterday.

Which, speaking of: fuck. 

He’s already apologising as he opens the door.

“Hi - hey, I’m sorry, I just put a load in - and I really need to go soon, I’ve got to see my grandparents, - but you can stay as long as you want, I’ll leave you the key - and there’s food in the fridge, I think? The thing you liked?”

He’s rambling. Dan is staring at him, wide-eyed, lips pursed. His spine is set with determination, like he’s about to face a wild animal. Phil must look like a lunatic. 

“Sorry, come in, though.”

He steps back, and Dan bumps his suitcase in, glancing around. He looks nervous - but then Phil would be, too, if he’d escaped from campus to see his boyfriend, and wash some socks, and had been met with a tornado like this. The apartment’s a mess. Phil’s a mess.

He looks at the clock. It’s a plausible lunch time. He goes to the fridge, figures Dan will pick his way around the random scatter of things on the floor if he’s given enough time.

“D’you want a sandwich? I got the hummus that you liked at that thing, if you want your weird rabbit food?" 

“Phil.” 

“Sorry, it’s not that weird. I didn’t mean to make it sound awful, I won’t - ”

“Phil.”

“Yeah?”

“I failed it.”

“What?”

“The exam, like. I failed it.”

“Oh. The psychology exam?”

He’s baffled. Dan had revised at his, for a bit, last week. Then he’d said that Phil was distracting, that he would study at the library. He’d been a bit turned around in that class all semester, but it had seemed fine. He’d been determined. He’d sent Phil pictures from the library, whining about revising. 

Dan nods. Phil is, inexplicably, still standing with the fridge open. He wants to go over, but now that he’s looking more carefully, he thinks Dan might bolt out of here if he makes a false move. 

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I think so. I don’t know what happened.”

“Are you sure? Did you get your marks?”

“No. No. I just,” he starts, “I don’t know?” 

He hesitates. 

“I just… got lazy, is all. About revising.”

Phil watches, wary, waiting for the rest. In what world do you fail a final exam for lack of caring? Dan can be distractible, sure, sometimes he wanders – but wasn’t he at the library? Wasn’t that the whole point?

Dan doesn’t say anything else. He stares into space for a minute, dazed. His hands come up to his face, slow motion, and he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. He looks like he’s gone to a different planet, in a different universe.

“It’s so stupid,” he says, quiet.

Phil finds himself standing in front of him, doesn’t know how or when he got there. At the last second he thinks to hold his hands out, a little, first, trying to be less of a surprise. Dan slumps into him. He drops his backpack against their feet. Phil can feel his heart hammering away, the adrenaline shakes setting in. That can’t be good, can it? People have heart attacks at nineteen, sometimes, don’t they? 

“Okay,” he says, softly.

“Okay? What - what the fuck? Is it? Is it okay?”

Phil is distinctly unqualified to answer that question.

“Um,” he says, eloquent as ever.

_ What on earth happened, _ he wants to ask, but not now. 

Dan is squirming, a little, agitated, but Phil doesn’t know what will happen if he lets go.

“D’you want to stay here for tonight, then?”

Dan’s ribs heave. “Fuck,” he says, and then stops.

Suddenly he’s pressing his face to Phil’s shoulder, but he’s pushing back like he’s trying to escape at the same time. Phil starts to let go, confused, but once Dan’s escaped he looks absolutely lost, so he draws him back again. 

He’s mumbling under his breath - _ “I can’t, fuck, I can’t.” _

“Can’t? Oh - oh, okay, right, it’s the end of term, home - do you need a ride to the train station? I’m sure - I’m sure there’s a train, leaving soon? Right? So you can see your mum?”

Dan starts to say something, but his ribs hitch, and then he starts coughing so hard it sounds like he’s choking, maybe. It seems rude to give him a heimlich, now, though, after everything? Phil doesn’t even know how, really. Maybe he should have learned? He loosens his grip, hoping that Dan can breathe and stay upright at the same time. He’s coughing, and shaking, and his face is wet, and Phil is being absolutely no use at all. Maybe he’s making it worse, seeing the way Dan is reacting. He doesn’t know. 

It feels like an eternity, but then Dan is breathing, at least. He scrubs at his eyes again. He stares at the ceiling, then over Phil’s left shoulder. Finally, he dips his head. His fingers tangle in the hem of Phil’s shirt. 

“I - uh. I didn’t tell my parents, is all. About, well. Any of it, I guess.”

“Oh.”

Phil is just barely following this conversation. He’s still stuck on all the other bits. Dan looks vaguely disoriented, but like he’s still steeling himself for something. 

“I don’t - I don’t know if I can go back there. Like. I - you know?”

“Oh, hey.”

“I didn’t even - I thought I could, and now it’s real, and I can’t. I don’t know.”

“Okay. Yeah, no, okay.”

“I just can’t. I mean, maybe - maybe soon, if - if it’s too much.”

“If what’s too much?”

“If me being here is too much." 

Phil pulls back a little to look at him. He’s catching up, finally. He can hear what Dan’s not quite saying.

“No, come on.”

“I’ll work at Asda again.”

_ You weren’t exactly their favorite employee the last time, _ Phil doesn’t say. 

“Sure. Sure, okay. Just - stay here, for now. For tonight, at least. Do your laundry - so we’re not facing this without socks?”

Dan nods. He’s breathing okay. Not great, rattling a little, but okay. Phil is less worried that he’s going to have a heart attack. 

“You have to go to that thing at your grandparents, right?”

Phil is absolutely desperate not to leave him. He can’t get out of it, though. He’s already late. He can’t very well get a dire illness now, like he didn’t know about it all morning. 

He nods back, mumbles _ sorry, yeah. _ Dan starts to untangle himself. He looks around, disoriented. He’s been here so many times, but he’s looking at Phil’s couch like he’s just arrived from Mars. Phil nudges him towards it - at least he’s moving under his own power.

He curls up in the far corner. Phil distantly wonders why he has such a big couch, if Dan takes up hardly any of it. He studies Dan for a minute, then disappears into his room, hauls his big blanket back out. 

Dan stares at it. 

“Am I - d’you want me to stay out here?”

“No? You can do whatever.”

“Am I sleeping here, though?”

Phil looks at the blanket in his hand, then at Dan.

Oh. What? 

“Oh, no. No. I just thought, uh, if you’re cold? And I’m not here?”

Normally Dan would make a face and a joke about Phil keeping him warm. Today his face just sort of twitches, maybe the ghost of a smile passing by.

Phil makes a show of wrapping it around him, twisting it around until Dan looks like a burrito with a head. He turns the tv on, and puts the remote where Dan can reach it with minimal wiggling. He digs his own clothes out. He is so fantastically late, now, but he can’t quite leave, so he makes the hummus sandwich that Dan won’t ask for, puts it on his sad-sack little coffee table.

“I don’t know if it’ll be as good as at the shop,” he says, quiet, “but we can get real food later, if you want.”

He leans down and gives Dan a kiss on the head before he leaves, apologizes again on the way out the door.

\--

Living together is - nice, honestly. Phil hadn’t thought much about living with a boyfriend, not until recently. He’d just been young, and broke, and then he’d figured that he was too quiet and odd to live with someone else. Not really the type. Not like he’d be alone, exactly, but - like maybe he would always need his own space. The idea that he could live with someone, and they could live with him, and they would still like each other at the end of it had seemed a little bit like a dream, somehow.

Dan is good, though. He’s surprised by how much he likes it. Phil likes going to sleep with him, waking up to Dan snoring quietly. Likes doing it out of habit, instead of something they have to arrange a time and a place for. He likes that they can fuck when they want and not worry about someone coming home, or about when Dan has to leave to go home. He likes just sitting together, without feeling like they’re wasting limited time. He likes that Dan knows where his glasses are even when he thinks they’ve been lost for weeks. He likes that there’s evidence of Dan’s life strewn around the house. He finds himself smiling when Dan buys weird cheese and leaves it in the fridge, with a post-it note that says “NOT FOR PHILLIP” in black sharpie.

The Asda idea doesn’t pan out, but they make it work, more or less.

\--

He still tells his stories, sometimes.

Sometimes Phil hesitates, doesn’t smile quite as fast as Dan expects. Sometimes Dan presses in, suddenly needy, mouth on Phil and hands on Phil and the rest of it far away.

Phil doesn’t mind. He likes it; that he can put Dan at ease that way, take care of him, lay with him when they’re both loose-limbed and happy. 

There’s one time, though. Dan says something that makes his blood run cold, and then presses against him, even clingier than usual. Phil is suddenly so aware of how fragile this is. 

He pulls away. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t stop himself. 

Dan goes stony. He rolls away, stays silent for a long time.

Phil would ask, but - what do you even say? _ Are you okay_, when he isn’t?

“Is there… anything I can do?”

That makes it sound like something’s happened. Like something’s broken. 

“No,” Dan says, vaguely sharp. Phil probably deserves that.

He doesn’t want to leave the room, anyways. 

Finally Dan goes, gets up to get water. Phil doesn’t know if he should follow him. He goes to the bathroom, instead.

They end up in a weird detente for most of the afternoon. They haven’t really fought in this flat. They haven’t fought much in general. Phil doesn’t even know if this really counts as fighting, what they’re doing now. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to act. Dan seems to be avoiding him, anyways, even when Phil’s two feet away. He seems - accustomed to this, somehow. Like he's read a guide book that Phil hasn't heard of.

He goes and gets a coffee at the place down the street, even though they have their own coffee in the cabinet. He forgets to bring anything to do while he’s there.

He goes home, and Dan has a game running, but he doesn’t look like he wants company. 

Phil’s already dozing when the bedroom door opens, ages later. He watches, hazy, as Dan gets ready for bed. He’s methodical. Everything has its place, its spot in the proper order.

He crawls into his side of the bed. He doesn’t roll into Phil. Phil doesn’t know if he’s meant to roll into him.

They stare at the ceiling, for a while. 

“Sorry,” Dan says.

“It’s fine.”

Dan looks sideways at him, then rolls his eyes.

They’re quiet a while longer.

“I don’t want this to be permanent, is all.”

He must see Phil wince. What a fucking way to start that conversation.

“Not us, I mean. Me.”

He hesitates.

“Not me, I guess. That sounds bad. Just the weird bits. Or - yeah. Just the weird bits.”

Phil still doesn’t know what to say. Dan doesn’t seem to mind. Sometimes he just seems to want to talk until he’s decided what direction to go in.

“I think there’s some things that - I thought were normal, and maybe they aren’t? And - I don’t know - maybe I’m not good at realizing when things are weird. Or too weird?” 

He looks over at Phil again, wary. They’ve talked a lot, about a lot of things, but - they’ve always dodged this one.

“Okay,” he finally replies, voice scratchy with sleep. Dan looks at him, considering, and seems to think that’s enough. He looks a bit relieved that there’s not more. He scoots over a ways, into Phil’s side of the bed, and Phil shifts to meet him. 

\--

Dan says, at one point, that he was always on the outskirts of his group of friends. Always too much of everything he shouldn’t be - too loud, too obvious, too neurotic. Too unreliable, disappearing sometimes for days on end. Too prone to picking fights about things no one else minded. Always the first to get cut out of the loop when there wasn’t space for a straggler.

Phil studies him, after. Dan’s loud. He’s a devout perfectionist. He’s stubborn as fuck. He has an opinion about every fucking thing on earth. Phil cannot imagine him as anything other than the center of everything; the little ball of energy the planets spin around.

\--

He tells his stories, still, but sometimes there’s no punchline. They don’t seem carefully laid out, the way the first ones were. Sometimes he starts talking and his brain catches up to his mouth at a later point. 

Phil feels a bit like one of those birds that mates by trading little trinkets back and forth. Some of them are fragile, and some of them explain things that Phil hadn’t realized they needed an explanation for. Sometimes he can’t tell if Dan wants to give them over, really, but he gets quite stubborn about dumping them at Phil’s feet. Sometimes it’s nice just to know that they can look at their odd baubles together, even if they don’t know quite what to do with them.

\--

They get the offer.

Phil never really envisioned it, but it feels right. He thinks of his friend’s sister, who kept an ant farm when they were little kids. Now she’s a professor, and leads trips abroad to study weird beetles. It’s like that, for him. He won’t be the weatherman, but he’d be doing the bits that he always liked. They’d get paid to joke around and talk about music, which they already do for free. They’d never have to worry about scrambling for rent money.

Phil stresses about it some, but that’s all. It would be fine. It would solve a lot of problems; it would give them a steady answer to a lot of questions. 

Dan is shattered.

Dan enjoyed the tests, the interviews, the idea. He enjoys the people.

They get the phone call together.

Twenty minutes later, Dan is gone, quiet footsteps down the hall.

Phil figures he’s just gone to the bathroom. 

Forty minutes later, he finds him. He’s behind the bed in their room. His back is pressed to the wall, his knees to his chest, his face to his knees. He’s shaking, shaking, shaking.

Phil holds him, willing his own breath to even out. He wants to be a rock, but he feels like a sandcastle.

He tries once, quietly, gentle as he can.

“We don’t have to, really? We can tell them no. We could find something else. We can run away to a leper colony, if you want.”

Dan’s chest heaves once, twice. He can’t tell if he’s about to sob, or hyperventilate, or if his body is just caving in. 

“No,” he says, barely more than a breath. “Sorry. Just.”

The story comes out in bits and pieces.

Dan wants this so much. He feels bad for wanting this so much. He feels bad for doing this to Phil. He feels bad for not having a backup plan. He feels bad for being reliant. He feels bad for avoiding his family. He feels bad for being the stupid one, too dumb and aimless to finish a degree. He feels bad for being scared. He feels bad for lying, feels bad for being a fraud, feels bad for making Phil lie too, for dragging Phil down with him. He feels like he does nothing right. He feels like he’s on the edge of failure. He feels like there’s nothing solid beneath him, no safety net, just a razor edge with a cliff on either side. He can’t do anything but this. Can’t follow any path but this one.

Phil tries to deny every point, gentle. Dan is immediately furious that he’s lying, that he’s patronizing, that he would try to protect Dan from himself. He gives up. He stays quiet. He doesn’t know what else to do.

Dan’s stopped shaking by the end, but his face is raw, bitten red, wet all over. He’s lost his voice. His eyes are swollen. He’s limp against Phil, exhausted.

He manages to sweet talk Dan into the shower, manages to scrub shampoo into his hair and back out again, even though Dan fights him, mumbling awful things under his breath the whole time. He manages to put clothes back on him. He manages to get him in the bed, under the covers instead of over. He manages to go to the sink, and get them each a water, and bring it back. It feels like a victory. 

Phil lays there, staring at the ceiling. He isn’t sure why he’s so surprised. He can’t work out where their paths parted. When he stopped paying attention. He feels like he’s been living on an island and spent the whole time thinking the ocean was a pond. 

He handles the first meeting. Dan has the flu, he says. _Yes, he’ll get well soon, yes, I’ll tell him, thank you._

He’s too tired to negotiate. He’s too tired to read the papers.

He can’t sign for Dan, so the next week Dan drags himself out of bed, pastes on a vaguely manic smile, and marches himself to the stupid meeting. Phil follows him around the whole way through. He reminds him that he might like to tie his shoes, and gets snapped at for his efforts. Dan is friendly with everyone else. Phil can’t tell if anyone else notices. If anyone worries that the whole friendship thing is an act. He hangs back, lets Dan do the talking. He tries not to rile him.

They leave for home and Dan’s irritated, but alright. Full of chicken wings, mainly.

They get home and Dan is crumpling again. He sags against the railing in the stairwell. He swats Phil away when Phil tries to give him a nudge, snaps that Phil can just pass him if he’s going to be annoying, then apologizes quietly a minute later. He looks genuinely distraught.

Phil finds him in bed, dead asleep, but with his shoes still on.

It’s as bad as Phil’s ever seen him. He orders takeaway too many times, too scared to leave Dan alone longer than it takes to run downstairs or smuggle a slice of pizza out of the fridge. He doesn’t know what Dan’s going to do, what with being in a coma, but Phil doesn’t want to find out. He finally caves and has to ask Martyn to bring them bottles of juice and gatorade, in case Dan stops eating like that one time.

Part of him wants to call Dan’s family and ask if there’s anything he’s missed, but he’d have to explain how they got here in the first place. 

Phil sits next to him, waiting, staring at his laptop for as long as his eyes can stand it. He starts planning. Then he finishes planning. He’s sort of fond of this idea, starts listing out what he would need to do to finish it - but then he looks down at Dan, dazed and quiet beside him, and he can’t imagine going to another room long enough to do it. 

Sometimes he can’t tell if Dan is quiet because he’s sleeping, or if he’s trying to sleep, or if he’s just waking up. It all blurs together. Dan will start talking, with his eyes still closed; or they’ll be in the middle of a conversation, and suddenly he’s not there. 

He tries to answer emails. He realizes that most of them involve Dan, too. He makes a list of things to ask when Dan’s awake. An hour later, he is, more-or-less, and Phil has to amend the working title to _ When Dan’s Awake (And He’s Eaten Something That Isn’t Orange Juice)_. Then it’s _ When Dan’s Awake, and He’s Eaten, and He’s Stopped Crying About Getting In the Shower_. Even later, Phil’s damp, and Dan’s eyes are half closed, and Phil imagines trying to make him look at a calendar, and then it’s _ When Dan’s Awake, Tomorrow_.

\--

“That was February of that year, right?”

“Yeah, it must’ve been. It was right after I tried to -“

He stops.

“Tried to?” Phil nudges, fingers over the keyboard. He’s tired. His glasses are slipping down his nose, but pushing them up would mean admitting that they’ll be here a while longer. He wants this done, so they can go to bed. Dan does this sometimes, starts a sentence and stops to collect his thoughts. 

There’s a long silence.

“After I - uh. Before we met. When I tried to - when I had - when I had a bad week.”

Phil turns to look at him, startled.

His shoulders are a tight line, hands folding and unfolding.

Phil had sort of figured, somehow. He’s seen the bottom of Dan’s spirals. He’s heard Dan joke over some mild irritation, and when he turns back later his jaw will be set in a stubborn clench. They split up some of their paycheck to donate, and Dan’s pick almost never changes. 

“Hey,” he says. He drops his hand between them, palm up. Dan reaches over, slots their fingers together for a moment - but then he squeezes once and takes it back, tucking his hands into his hoodie pocket. He’s staring intently at the tv, even though there’s nothing on. 

If it were up to Phil, they would talk, and he would be kind, and Dan would take it for the truth that it is. He’d bundle Dan up and shield him from - whatever. Everything.

He’s tried it before, though. Dan had gone along with it, sort of. Phil had been kind, and Dan had squirmed but stayed silent enough that he wasn’t technically arguing. Finally, Phil had said “alright? Do you believe me?” and Dan had rolled over, kicking at the blankets, and said “yes - I think so - will you let me out of this bed jail so I can take a piss?”

Phil had fallen asleep to the sound of Dan shuffling around the kitchen. He found him in the morning, asleep on the couch, with a blanket twisted around him like he’d gone to war with it all night. They’d talked, and Dan had admitted that he could barely stand to listen, like that, to Phil being kind, and lying to him, when he feels like a monster direct from the swamp. He’s all raw edges, some days, and Phil’s attempts at patching him feel like sandpaper. It makes him want to bolt into the night, even though he won’t, because Phil would worry if the door slammed behind him. 

Phil hums. The clock says it’s 2 am, but fuck it.

“Hey - did we forget to eat dinner, earlier? I think I want pizza.”

Dan cracks a smile. Phil is entirely transparent. He doesn’t mind. 

Dan’s limbs slowly unwind as they argue over what sauce is _ really _ worth asking for. Dan doesn’t even really like some of them, just wants them in case he regrets it when they’re not there. He admitted it, months ago, and now when Phil says it he gets mad that Phil would use his own words against him.

Dan goes to take a shower while they wait, dropping a hand on Phil’s shoulder and a kiss on his head as he leaves.

They’re mostly quiet while they eat. Or, aside from Dan whining about not having his fourth sauce, because he would like to put one bite of chicken into it, and then no more.

“Sorry,” he says eventually, staring contemplatively at his pizza crust.

“Are you apologizing to - the bread?”

“No, like, I don’t know. I know we’re meant to talk about things. I know I’m supposed to be honest. I can’t even - I can’t even talk about this, really.”

Phil shrugs, hums around a bite.

Dan huffs. “I’m trying to be, like, vulnerable, here, you absolute pizzahead.”

Phil almost chokes. It’s a mild jab, by Dan’s standards, but he can still catch Phil off guard, sometimes.

“Sorry. No. You’re right,” he says. “I just - I mean - we were so young, then? When we met? I just wanted to impress you, and I know there’s things I didn’t tell you. And now it’s different. We talk about everything now, but we didn’t then, not really.”

Dan’s fiddling with his napkin. 

“It’s weird when there’s things you don’t know about me.”

Phil smiles. He has the most sideways way of being sappy, sometimes.

“There were things I didn’t even know about myself. I don’t know how we would’ve told each other.”

Dan considers it. 

“Do you think about that? Like, how truth is relative, to where you are in the world? And we were - running around, making decisions, thinking we knew everything? I was - god, such a twat - and such a sadsack twat, too - and people were letting me make, like, real life decisions? Things that mattered?” 

He pauses, breathes in once, twice.

“It could’ve been so different. You know? I could’ve ruined this. I didn’t even know.”

Phil recognizes this part, at least. Dan won’t take a cuddle when he’s surprised himself, but there’s some things that he rolls around for months until it’s a whole thought. He’ll show it to Phil, eventually, and then he just wants to know that it wasn’t mad; that he isn’t alone with it.

Phil abandons his empty plate. Dan makes a face like Phil's entirely predictable, which he is - but he still scoots over, tucking himself into Phil’s waiting arms. This is familiar for the both of them. Practiced, like. Phil yanks at the blanket they keep on the couch and pulls it over them, even though they agree that it’s a weird material and they shouldn’t have bought it. Dan’s curls are still damp and sticky against his cheek. He digs a hand in them, scratching gently at the base of Dan’s skull. 

“We got lucky.” 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, muffled. “I just hate that that’s all that did it.” 

They’ve talked before about how Dan struggles with risk; how he doesn’t mind throwing himself into things, but feels disoriented and panicked and out of control the second he missteps. Or thinks he might misstep. How he can’t trust that the universe will pick up his slack.

They don’t have to talk about that part, now. It’s not the time for it. 

Phil’s - fond of that, somehow. The way they can jump in on chapter five, bypassing the worn and dog-eared pages.

Phil’s quiet, for a while. Dan might be dozing. 

“I always think - when I was like, fifteen, sixteen? I was like a half-formed playdough boy.”

“What?” 

He can feel Dan’s forehead crinkle.

“Like a playdough boy, made by a child. Now I’m an adult, like a whole person, I think, but then I was - walking around with hair made in the pasta machine, and toothpick hole eyes, and -“

“No. No.”

“- and no one told me, you know? I didn’t have real eyeballs.”

Dan lurches. He is absolutely not graceful, but suddenly he’s standing over the couch, tugging at Phil by the elbows, all fake stern.

“It’s bedtime. I love you, and I hate this, and I will not hear about your madman shit any longer. Come on.”

Phil wiggles, tries to pull him back down, resisting just long enough to make Dan break his act.

They stay standing long enough to brush their teeth, even though he keeps pulling his toothbrush out of his mouth to elaborate on his playdough boy theory, and Dan tries to smother him with a bath towel.

They go to bed. Dan lets him pull him in close, lets him tangle their legs together. Phil kisses the edge of his shoulder blade and whispers, “hey - I’m glad you’re with me,” and Dan squeezes his arm, wiggling closer.

He wakes up, and they’ve shifted, but Dan is still tucked loosely under his arm - relaxed, and safe, and breathing.

\--

“I got an appointment." 

“Oh - for your allergies?”

“No, like. You know.”

Phil startles, turns away from wiping the stove. 

Dan’s busily sweeping crumbs into his hand. Phil studies him for a minute, watching the way he keeps going back to the same spot by the toaster.

He shrugs, turns back to scrub at a stubborn bit. This isn’t a look-Dan-in-the-face kind of conversation, apparently.

They’ve talked about it before. Phil was usually desperate, or just this side of angry, really. He’d been a bit pushy. 

Dan had clamped his jaw shut in a way that meant that he would have yelled and had a fight, usually, except he was too tired, and didn’t care enough to match Phil’s energy. It made Phil feel like an absolute ass. Like he was holding Dan back, even though Dan mainly just wanted to chuck the whole thing out to sea. 

He’s learned to deal with it when Dan is an absolute gargoyle, irritable and spouting off bullshit all the time; or when he’s needy, worn down and whining. 

It’s just when he gets too calm, too resolute, that familiar stubborn hardness creeping into him - Phil gets irrational, starts thinking he might as well go in with a pick axe, if nothing else will do it. It feels like he's gone to war with a mountain, sometimes.

Sometimes he lands on the far side of angry, if he’s entirely honest. 

Dan’s been alright, though, lately. Even keeled, at least. He dips below the surface, sometimes, but never too far out of sight. It’s the particular sort of sadness that seems to make Dan even more determined to carry on; even more convinced that he can grin and bear it. 

Phil isn’t quite sure what’s brought this on.

Dan dumps a handful in the trash. He’s still faced the other way, rearranging things on the counter. 

“That’ll be good, right?” 

“I don’t know. I guess. Lucy said it was, like. Not that bad? Useful, she thought?”

Phil hums. “Glad you talked to her. You want the sponge yet?” 

“Yeah, can I?”

He turns around, finally, so he can hand off the sponge. Dan meets his eyes, briefly, but he doesn't seem to want to keep looking. Phil shifts a bit to get out of the way.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Is everything alright? Is this – is something happening?”

_ Something _ is a loose word, he knows. Sometimes it’s not much more than a change in the wind.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I think I just - want to get ahead of it, this time. If I can.”

\--

“And your family, Dan? How’re your parents?

He has a bite on his fork, but he pauses, thinking.

“My mum’s alright. She just put in new roses, at the new house, which I guess was all she was waiting for. Adrian’s good. She says he’s being annoying, but.”

Kath smiles. She’s been there, Phil figures.

“And your dad? How is he faring?”

Dan shrugs.

“I’m not sure. I think he’s alright.”

“Phil said he’d moved to be closer to your grandparents?”

Dan considers it. 

“I think so. That’s what he said he would do, at one point.”

He turns back to his chicken, with a casual shrug. Phil looks up at his parents - his mum is a bit wide eyed, while his dad looks carefully neutral.

Phil’s a bit surprised, too, really. Not that it happened, in general, but that it finally happened, this time. That Dan hasn’t said anything definite, until now - although when Phil thinks about it, he’s mainly been talking to his brother and his mum on the topic, and he usually comes back to Phil worn and quiet. He’s surprised that Dan would tell the rest of them, like this, still in the midst of it.

They move onto other topics.

Later, he helps his mum dry dishes.

“Have they spoken at all, since - ?” she asks, soft enough so they can’t be heard in the next room.

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t mentioned it. I imagine he would.”

She’s quiet for a long time.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t know if she’s thinking of it as a parent, losing a child who’s still alive, or as a child, cutting ties. He doesn’t know if it’s worse to leave entirely, and wonder the what-ifs that Dan has whispered to him late at night, or to stay tied to something ugly by a frayed string. He can’t quite imagine it. He doesn’t know how to ask. 

\--

“I mean, it would be fine, right?”

Phil looks up. He’d forgotten they were having a conversation.

In his defense - Dan had gone from sitting like a normal person, to pacing around and only talking when he passed by, to - whatever this is. Flopped facedown on the couch, feet dangling over the armrest. That had been ten minutes ago. He’d sort of figured they were done. 

Phil had thought, when he was a kid, that living with someone this long would mean that they would act like couples in the movies. Like the main character’s boring suburban parents, always serving large bowls of bog standard pasta. Mainly, he’s realized, it means that he gets to watch Dan be an absolute weirdo, all unfiltered and vaguely feral, well past the point of editing himself, wandering about misusing couches and eating jam with a spoon. 

He thinks about it. 

He’s already agreed that it would be fine. He’s already agreed that it might not be fine, actually, and that Dan’s arguments aren’t irrational. He’s already agreed that Dan _ could_, but that he doesn’t _ have _ to.

He’s already said that everything would be alright, either way, which had made Dan glare at him until he’d agreed to go over the pros and cons again, _ seriously _ this time.

He tries a different tactic.

“Honestly, love? I don’t know. I hope so.”

Dan turns his face a bit, frowning. His nose is still squashed into the couch. He looks ridiculous. A bit like a Picasso painting, if Phil’s honest. A cute Picasso painting, though, if that exists. It probably doesn't.

“D’you want more than that?”

Dan nods, sulky. 

“Hm,” Phil says. “I think that’s all I’ve got, actually, on this end. If I made tea, though, and then put Swedish fish in it so it looks like they’re swimming, like you invented, would that fill the void of uncertainty in the universe?”

Dan snatches a pillow and chucks it at him before he can duck. 

Phil chucks it back - mainly out of habit - and just barely catches Dan’s muffled _ “fine” _as he goes to the kitchen.


	2. how to love you right

They’ve talked about it before.

The first time was horrible.

Their accountant says something offhand, looking at their joint bank account, their fiasco with the flat.

“Are you still filing separately?”

Dan goes deadly still.

Phil pauses. He smiles. Sort of. He tries to smile, anyways. He opens his mouth, and hopes the right words will come out. He wishes people would warn him, somehow. He could prepare a good answer, probably.

Suddenly, Dan is - god. Dan is a whirlwind. Dan is smiling too wide, voice too loud for this quiet office.

“Yeah - yeah. What, what do you want us to do - have a fake wedding so our paperwork is easier? That seems a bit lazy, doesn’t it?”

Phil does his best not to wince.

Helen smiles back, easy. They’re her youngest clients. She told them once that they remind her of her sons. She’s not terribly fazed when Dan’s like this. When he snaps back like a disgruntled teenager. When he hits the gas fast enough to give Phil whiplash.

“Well, it’s alright.”

She hesitates, glancing at the computer screen, then back to Dan.

“As long as I can charge you for two again. You know how that cheers me.”

She says it with the practiced levity of a mum that knows it’s her house, her rules. The quiet confidence of an old cowboy reaching to touch a spooky horse.

It’s enough for Dan to settle, a bit. He likes a joke, likes when someone else defuses the situation instead of trying to fight him on it. He’s tense, but not coiled so tight.

They move on, Helen rattling off questions, Dan slowly softened by the monotony.

Phil breathes. He stares out the window behind the desk, absently wondering which building that is. The rushing storm in his ears quiets. Helen pauses, catches his eye for confirmation over something. She looks at him like he’s a kid at the adults’ table, zoning out while the grownups talk. He realizes his face is frozen in the same smile he pasted on earlier, like he was enthralled by their little joke this whole time.

\--

“Why haven’t we talked about getting married?”

Phil blinks. He finds the butter.

“Uh.”

It wasn’t legal until about a minute ago, he doesn’t say.

It’s public record, he doesn’t say.

You would’ve gone berserk if I’d brought it up, he doesn’t say.

You’ve gone berserk every time anyone else brings it up, he doesn’t say.

He closes the fridge, scrapes butter onto the toast. The coffee maker is still gurgling. He can barely hold “buttering the toast” and “should we get married, and if so, why haven’t we made up our minds already” in his head at the same time.

He scoots one plate across the counter. Dan has his arms crossed, protective. Not from Phil, but just - from the world, this early in the morning. His hair is stuck up on one side. He stares down at the toast like it holds the secrets.

“I guess I just... forgot that we were old enough?”

It’s a ridiculous answer. Their friends have kids. Second kids, even.

“Do you want to? I didn’t know if you’d, y’know. Want that.”

Dan shrugs. He picks up a piece, but doesn’t take a bite. “Maybe. It’s nothing. I just dreamed about it. We had a wedding. We had a house and there was... a dragon in the backyard.”

“A dragon?"

“Well, it acted like a dog, but it had wings, and it burned down the shed. We don’t have a shed, actually, do we?”

Phil is so tired. Do they have a shed? He genuinely can’t remember.

The coffee dings and sure, he shouldn’t interrupt when Dan’s talking like this, but he’s desperate. When he turns back, Dan’s got this little smile, sort of sheepish.

“It was nice.”

“The wedding? Or your dragon dog?”

“Mostly the dragon dog, I think. I liked the shed, too.” He takes a bite, thinking for a while. “Actually, I think it was sort of a nightmare, really? The wedding bit was nice, but then we lost a really good shed. I was really upset about the shed. Most of the dream was about us trying to buy a new shed, that would match up to the quality of the old shed.”

Phil squints into his coffee for - a long time. Maybe too long.

Finally, he puts on his best Impression of Dan’s Therapist Voice. “Owning a shed is a good life goal, Daniel. I think this would be very productive.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “She wouldn’t tell me to spend the rest of my life taking my neurotic lifestyle out on purchasing a garden shed, actually.”

“No?”

“No. I told you it was a nightmare.”

“Okay, well. If you want to go look at garden sheds, let me know?”

“Okay. Do we have nutella still, or did you eat it all?”

Phil nods, hides his smile until Dan’s turned away.

Dan has a fit when he finds that the jar is down to its last dregs.

\--

Dan starts slipping it into his jokes, when they’re puttering around the flat on a lazy morning.

On tour, he grumbles that living on a tour bus is like a months long trip to IKEA, and now that they’ve done it they can definitely get married.

He lets it slide when their friends drunkenly giggle. He laughs along, even.

They talk about it a fourth time, and a fifth. Dan doesn’t want his stability, his sense of safety, to depend on someone else, but - it’s not like that anymore. They’re not like that anymore.

He’s steady, now, in a way Phil couldn’t have pictured, if you’d asked him at the end of most of the years they’ve known each other. He has his own things, and he’s not just saying that to try to convince himself. He chafes less at the ways they do overlap. He harasses Phil for not cleaning, still, but it’s taken a milder edge; there’s things that Phil does that Dan hasn’t bothered double-checking in years.

Phil thought he loved him as much as he could possibly love anyone, when they met, but after so long it’s like they’ve grown to fit each other, slowly shifted until they’re two seamless pieces of the world’s easiest puzzle.

\--

They’re terrible at keeping secrets from each other.

\--

Dan does the absolute worst job of finding out Phil’s ring size. It’s a disaster. He calls Martyn, after, and finds that he can barely tell the story without laughing and losing the plot.

The first try, he says something vague and stuttering about measuring Phil’s fingers. Phil leers and he huffs, rolls his eyes, acts like he couldn’t have seen that coming.

The second try, he tries to drag them into a jewelry store, something about new earrings, but they’re hungry, and they walk by it, and forget to go back.

The third try, Dan holds out a little ring measuring tape, and grimly tells him that he needs to make sure that a ring pop will fit correctly. Phil smiles, slow, and Dan has to bite his lip hard so he won’t give in.

\--

He catches the website open on Dan’s laptop.

\--

He catches another website open a week later.

\--

He doesn’t mention the first or the second time, so the third time he just leans over Dan’s shoulder and tries to look with him. They get into a wrestling match, which is mainly Phil hanging onto Dan’s neck and refusing to let go.

\--

“If we get a dog, you can’t divorce me for ten years, because I won’t have our child growing up in a broken home.”

“We’re not married, actually? The dog is going to be a bastard.”

Dan’s eyes narrow. He frowns. It’s the cartoon one that he does when Phil’s right but he won’t admit it.

“You have to promise. I’m not going to be a single parent. I couldn’t handle it. I’m - very busy, Phil, as you know.”

Phil rolls his eyes. Busy people are often found eating toast in their pants at one in the afternoon, obviously.

\--

Phil finds another website open on his laptop, again. He’s atrocious at this.

\--

“You don’t want - like. You don’t want a big thing, right?”

Phil makes a face. “Your mum wants a big thing.”

Dan yelps. He walked right into it.

\--

He wakes up to the door closing, then something tap-tapping along the floor, then a yelp, and Dan muttering. He rolls over and looks up at the ceiling for a minute. There’s another yelp, more tapping, something crashing into the garbage can.

He shuffles downstairs.

“I should have done this in the car,” Dan says, to no one.

Phil can see his hair poking out from behind the counter. There’s more scrambling.

“Daniel?”

“Yeah? No! Wait there. There’s donuts. Fuck, don’t come get them, though! Stay there! Okay.”

He pokes his head out from behind the counter, wide eyed. His hair’s a mess, wet with rain. He’d told Phil he was going for an early run - while pulling on jeans, the dweeb.

“Can I unleash the kraken?”

There’s another yelp. It sounds distinctly like a dog.

(More specifically: it sounds like the dog that Dan had shown him on his phone, after Phil had asked him what on earth he was so stressed about, and Dan had caved and mumbled “hypothetically - _if_ we got a dog” into the pillow - followed by “fine, _one_ video” - and then Phil had understood why he was bleary eyed, and also why there was a business card for a vet sitting on the counter all week.)

Phil nods, trying to fight back a smile. He needs to save them for later.

“Okay... okay, go. Go! Go on?”

A tiny puppy pokes his head out. He can see Dan’s hand on its butt, pushing it along.

The puppy stares at Phil, considering. Dan pops out again, looking equally unsure.

“Sorry. Uh, he doesn’t know anything, I don’t think. He doesn’t do, like, any dog stuff yet.”

The strain of not laughing is going to kill him. They look so alike, all wet and bewildered. He has to squeeze his eyes shut for a second to stop the wave of hysterics.

Phil hears Dan get up, followed by the sound of the fridge.

A piece of something flies out from behind the counter, landing at Phil’s feet. The puppy considers it. Finally he waddles over, little stumpy legs and odd floppy ears. He looks like an overly large sausage, made by some kind of madlad sausage maker. He is distinctly terrible at walking. Phil loves him already.

He crouches down, glancing up at Dan, who’s slowly shuffling over, trying not to surprise the dog.

There’s a glint of something on his collar. There’s a little hang tag next to it, with a note in Dan’s handwriting. He stares at them for a minute.

“Yeah?” Dan says, softly. He looks genuinely unsure, which just about makes Phil lose it. Like after all this he’s going to say no, fuck it all, turn back. He beams up at him, hopes it comes across how sure he is.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to.”

“Cool.”

Phil wrinkles his nose. He puts on a voice. “Sounds great, _bro_.”

Dan starts laughing, then, dropping down next to them, curling both arms around Phil’s middle and hiding his face against his shoulder. He’s humming with nerves, laughing, hiccuping a little bit. He whispers something that sounds like _“oh, god, we have a dog.”_ – which is ridiculous, since it’s his own fault. Phil can’t help giggling, giddy. He didn’t realize it would feel quite like this, after this long. He’d sort of thought they were past the point of big surprises.

He kisses Dan’s temple, tries to keep his hands out of the puppy’s mouth.

They stay there, curled up on the floor, until Dan sighs.

“Oh, no. You’re not taking this back?”

“No. Mm. It’s just that I want to cuddle? But now I’ve brought you this dog.”

“Okay. So you’ve fulfilled your end of the deal? We can cuddle?”

Dan wrinkles his nose, makes a face that Phil thinks is altogether too grumpy for the situation.

“The dog doesn’t know where to pee.”

“Okay?”

“And they don’t make dog diapers. And I did check.”

“Sure.”

“So we’re going to have to go outside.”

“Oh. Oh, in the rain, you mean?”

Dan rolls his eyes.

“Yes. In the rain. And we’re going to have to sit there, outside, being soggy, until the dog pees. And then we have to congratulate him on peeing.”

Phil grins. He’s not sure if he’s stopped grinning. His face hurts.

“Okay. Do you think we can get through this, together?”

Dan’s face lands against his shoulder with a solid thunk. “You sappy fucking bastard,” he says, or something like it. Phil can hardly make it out, muffled as it is. Phil is already laughing, gleeful at the reaction he knew was coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me at [@chickenfreeblog](https://chickenfreeblog.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, where I have finally sworn off of talking shit about chickens.


End file.
